Artist-run residency programe, based in Mallorca island. Member of Artist-run network Europe and Microresidence network. Sponsored by Institut d’Estudis Balearics

Leire Pérez Dezcallar, Ciudad vegetal; exchange with Lichtenberg Studios

The artist Leire Pérez Dezcallar (Palma 1997) was chosen in a call for applications from espai sant Marc in Sineu to do a residency this summer at Lichtenberg Studios, which depends on the municipality of Lichtenberg in Berlin, in an exchange that has been taking place for three years and which has led several artists from the Balearic Islands to do residencies and exhibitions of their work at the Museum Lichtenberg im Stadthaus. A joint exhibition is planned for autumn 2025 at the Museum Lounge. Perez Dezcallar Works toguether with Matthias Beckmann, the artist from Berlin who did the residency in Sineu. Leire tells us about her experience:

“The neighborhood felt familiar from the very beginning. Its inhabitants, coming from many different countries, seek ways to communicate within an urban landscape full of contrasts. Vegetation grows through the cracks in the concrete, climbs effortlessly over walls, while graffiti leaves its fleeting marks on doors and facades. Between plants and people, the city seems to fill every gap, as if trying to counteract the fear of emptiness: that horror vacui which nature and urban art strive to dispel.    

During my residency, I explored Lichtenberg, pausing at places where the urban and the vegetal meet. This exploration became the starting point for a pictorial and installation-based artwork that imagines new ways of inhabiting the city, focusing on those spaces that act as small reservoirs of hope.

Each place visited reveals a story, a tension, or a possibility for dialogue with nature. They are spaces of encounter, shared culture, collective care, or collaborative construction.
  I was particularly struck by the parks that emerge almost unexpectedly every few meters: places where plant life grows freely, untamed. In some of them, community gardens transform into spaces of shared learning and coexistence. Among the places I explored are the Landschaftspark Herzberge, the Community Garden and the Intercultural Garden Lichtenberg.

Project

From this exploration emerged a large vertical canvas (160 × 350 cm), created through photographic transfer and acrylic painting. Each section combines images of real buildings from the neighborhood with painted vegetal forms, building a visual narrative oriented toward hope. Large eyes appear among the wild vegetation, representing the invisible gazes of the inhabitants, as if observing the city from within nature itself. Roots intertwine and spread, much like the green heating pipes (Fernwärmeleitungen) or the railway tracks that cross the area, forming living networks that sustain daily life in the neighborhood.

The work invites us to see the vegetal world not as a mere decorative background, but as an active presence: symbolic, political, and sensitive. In this way, the Lichtenberg neighborhood becomes a living metaphor for that invisible, interconnected ecosystem that sustains urban life.”

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    Adriana Cerecero

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